ends. In the year 1880, he writes to his colleague, Mr. Fitch, "I
have this year been reading _David Copperfield_ for the first time.[13]
Mr. Creakle's School at Blackheath is the type of our English Middle
Class Schools, and our Middle Class is satisfied that so it should be."

It would seem that he made this rather belated acquaintance with
Dickens' masterpiece, through reading it aloud to one of his children
who was laid up with a swelled face. But, however introduced to his
notice, the book made a deep impression on him. In the following June he
contributed to the _Nineteenth Century_ an article on Ireland styled
"The Incompatibles." In that article he suggests that the Irish dislike
of England arises in part from the fact that "the Irish do not much come
across our aristocracy, exhibiting that factor of civilization, the
power of manners, which has undoubtedly a strong attraction for them.
What they do come across, and what gives them the idea they have of our
civilization and its promise, is our Middle Class."

The mention, so frequent in his writings, of "our Middle Class," seems
to demand a definition; and, admitting that in this country the Middle
Class has no naturally defined limits, and that it is difficult to say
who properly belong to it and who do not, he adopts an educational test.
The Middle Class means the people who are brought up at a particular
kind of school, and to illustrate that kind of school he has recourse to
his newly-discovered treasure. "Much as I have published, I do not think
it has ever yet happened to me to comment in print upon any production
of Charles Dickens. What a pleasure to have the opportunity of praising
a work so sound, a work so rich in merit, as _David Copperfield_!... Of
the contemporary rubbish which is shot so plentifully all round us, we
can, indeed, hardly read too little. But to contemporary work so good as
_David Copperfield_ we are in danger of perhaps not paying respect
enough, of reading it (for who could help reading it?) too hastily, and
then putting it aside for something else and forgetting it. What
treasures of gaiety, invention, life, are in that book! what alertness
and resource! what a soul of good nature and kindness governing the
whole! Such is the admirable work which I am now going to call in
evidence. Intimately, indeed, did Dickens know the Middle Class; he was
bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. Intimately he knew its
bringing-up. With the han